Roadblocks
Why prepping might not work out the way you planned.
There are going to be things in the future that will negatively affect your plans.
A common suggestion about preparing for a future that will be less convenient, and one that I have investigated, is that you learn about native and wild food sources.
The reality of it is that along with most other food sources, environmental degradation is impacting the availability of wild food.
A significant source of food for native populations has been acorns. Several of the people I use to keep track of developments in the natural world have told me that there has been a drastic decline in acorns in the last several years.
My own investigations in the area where I live have borne out this information.
Other considerations are zoonotic transmission of diseases. This is illustrated perfectly in the transfer of bird flu from infected animals to humans, both in the wild, in farmworkers, and in backyard chicken flocks.
Water quality is being negatively impacted by ever-increasing amounts of toxins from runoff and wildfires. The water may not be drinkable, and the presence of toxins in the fish we eat is already a threat.
The backyard garden.
As anyone who has attempted to grow food in their backyards can attest, it’s hard to grow anything in the extreme heat and cold that we’re experiencing.
My friend in Los Angeles watched his garden wither and die in the heat a few years back, and that is only going to get worse.
Stocking up.
Food storage and stores are going to be limited by several factors, not the least of which is your financial situation. You’ll have to buy cheap things with a long shelf life. Food storage is going to be finite, and if it continues along the current lines it’s entirely possible that you will have to defend your supplies, which opens up a whole new can of worms.
Viable support systems and groups.
If you have tried to develop a community support group, you have probably run up against the same obstacles that I have.
The biggest obstacle is getting people to recognize the urgency of our situation and to act on that urgency.
The group I’m involved with in my town started only about a week ago with a lot of interest and has since died down to only a few people participating.
This can be massively discouraging if you have accepted the dangers that we are faced with.
What ever shall we do.
There is a good article by
called It’s All Hitting The Fan Now that has some good advice on things you can investigate.My personal journey right now is to do what I can, for as long as I can, and accept the inevitability of what is going to happen.
We are our own best hope for whatever salvation is left. The choices will get fewer and further between as bad transitions to worse in the death spiral of this, “…the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.”
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I think you are right. In the long run, shortages will cause a lot of deaths. In the short term, we need to stock up on what we can and try to preserve what we can using some of Ms. Wildfire's ideas. I am already doing that, and we are now ramping that up this week. My wife went to the store this morning and she ran into a panicked populous. Word has gone out about shortages due to the tariffs and people are panic buying this week. In a couple of days, the shelves are likely to be relatively bare.
We are all in trouble here in the west as this trade war ramps up in earnest. Mexico has been given a one month reprieve when the PM offered to put 10,000 Mexican troops on the border in exchange for more U.S. cooperation to stop the gun smuggling. China is taking the U.S. to court in a more symbolic gesture than anything as the WTO court is pretty useless. Their economy, although slowing some, is still better able to handle the trade issues than Canada. Canada is going full tilt as best as they can, in every province except Alberta. Alberta still thinks they can suck up to Trump and get by. Premier Smith is delusional. Meanwhile, Canada is pulling every bit of American alcoholic beverages off their shelves right now, plus other tariffs.
I was joking (not joking) with a Canadian friend about my grandfather being a Canadian citizen who immigrated to the U.S. and if that would help me immigrate to Canada, should the need arise. A question I never thought I would be asking a few years ago.
Great time to start death pools. Who want to put in a dollar that I will die before Campi?